Thursday, February 17, 2011

Three in a row

Above is last night's sunset. It was the third "sun show" in a row. The streak broke this morning as the sun rose with no hint of anything spectacular. Interestingly, I had written off last night's sunset. As the sun neared the horizon, it was totally blah, bland and boring. Honest. Even as it was going below the horizon, all it did was make a blog of light (shown in top small thumbnail). Then, quite suddenly, everything changed. (See second small thumbnail.) We had a wonderful light show that lasted quite some time. As usual when these awesome light shows begin, they change their hue, depth, tint and saturation almost with each passing second. As the minutes pass, it is almost as if time stops while us mere humans stand mute and transfixed awed by their utter beauty. The campfire takes a backseat while the Sun Show Goes On!

The wind blew pretty stiff all day but laid down about campfire time so we enjoyed another flickering episode.
As the embers and coals ebbed, we put on a dutch oven full of Idaho Russet Burbank potatoes for Thursday breakfast. Eggs & Taters here we come! Yum.

Sparky came rather late yesterday but being the frenetic, hyper electrician that he is, he had the 30 amp service installed in well under one hour. He really chose a creative mounting for the all-weather unit. He's a great guy. Afterwards, he helped me realize how easy it would be to wire up the inside of the house. I had a major breakthrough with this realization and we will probably proceed soon in that direction.

The Old Field swarmed with people yesterday. Most of them were Camp Verde High School Cowboys. You can always tell kids from CVHS--the young males were black cowboy hats and tight fitting jeans and all try to look like George Strait or Clint Black. The kids planted bazillions of small native species. The NPS must think our house is an eyesore as they really loaded up on plants right smack dab in front of our place and right smack dab snugged right to the fence line. Ah, well, it will be many years and untold hundreds of Happy Hours before they obstruct our view.

After Sparky departed, I headed overta Cottonwood. Probably wouldn't have gone except we were out of drinking water. We buy all our culinary drinking water from a "water store" over there. It's 30 cents a gallon and well worth the time and trouble to get it. Fifteen gallons generally lasts nearly two weeks. We use our own well water for everything except for drinking.

We didn't do much notable in Cottonwood except for getting yet another spare tire for SuziQ. Big news, huh? We bought five tires and wheels Sunday for twenty bucks total from a guy in Anthem, a suburb of Phoenix. Turns one that one of the wheels and tires matched SuziQ's specs perfectly. All it needed was a re-bead and it's good to go. So now we have THREE spare tires for SuziQ. Cool!

On the way back, we ran into Gary at the gas station. He had loaded 350 firre bricks into the back of his truck. That's probably 2000+ pounds. They are pristine and amazing fire bricks with quite an interesting backstory. Maybe we will tackle an earth oven afterall.

Susun and Stasea had a fine day yesterday. The photos below was from the beach walk and the train ride. Here's the text of a note Susun sent early Wednesday:

"Just returned from a 3 mile walk to the Spouting Horn, passed Baby Beach and thebeautiful Allerton Gardens. The weather was mostly sunny and a delicious light breeze.Came home had a shower and a great breakfast including some really great soy sausage.Going to Lihue to by kitchen curtain fabric and take a TRAIN RIDE! Tonight meeting Stasea's old roomie Sarah and a friend for Happy Hour before going to Dr Larry and Carolines for Dinner."

2 comments:

Let Susun know I've been to the exact spot she was yesterday. Also, the Allerton Gardens were owned by an adopted bankers son from Chicago. There's a lot to the story and hopefully she will learn about it. And you, too. It's quite interesting. Allerton Park in Illinois is not far from my Decatur home and was owned by this same Allerton's father. It was my favorite spot. I loved this place in Kauai when I went there. And the spouting horn, too. It's a lovely island. Stasea is truly blessed to live in such a lovely place. And the most free ranging chickens I've ever seen.